Dear HCN,
The revised White River
Forest Plan does not sound that different from the revised Targhee
Forest Plan, so it is not all that precedent-setting (HCN,
1/17/00). The Targhee Forest Plan closed 93 percent of the forest
to motorized use of any kind, including all summer cross-country
ORV use, eliminated nine livestock allotments, set a minuscule
timber harvest of 8 million board-feet down from 75 MBF before, and
closed 900-plus miles of roads in addition to 1,245 miles closed
between 1990 and 1997.
Of course, the Targhee
Forest also received 14 appeals of its revised plan and when the
forest released the first Travel Plan based on the direction in the
Forest Plan, it received 1,272 appeals. We are now on the second
appeal of the Travel Plan.
When you take a hard,
in-your-face line, you often get a hard, in-your-face response.
Sounds like that is the direction the White River Forest is headed.
Good luck!
Jim
Gerber
St. Anthony,
Idaho
The writer is a former
U.S. forester retired from the Targhee, now the public land advisor
for the Fremont (Idaho) County
Commissioners.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline White River is like Targhee.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
